"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Grayson: "Money Is The Original Sin Of Politics And Governance"

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Campaign money is very bipartisan and is also the root of power for the congressional leadership. It takes a special kind of crooked mind-- a Rahm Emanuel, a Mitch McConnell, a John Boehner, a Chuck Schumer, a Steny Hoyer, a Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- to suck up to the corrupt sources of cash and then use it to buy influence from your colleagues without those kinds of inclinations but with the same all-encompassing need to raise ungodly sums of money for reelection.Jolly, a former lobbyist himself, told the CBS News audience this week that to chase the money-changers out of the temples of government the American people are going to have to get genuinely angry, something he contends will happen "when they learn that you have a part time Congress in a full-time world, spending more time shaking down the American people for money than doing their job."His appearance on 60 Minutes, which CBS has conveniently expunged from YouTube, infuriated the congressional leadership of both parties-- and the NRCC is pushing back against Jolly hard, accusing him of lying "when he told O’Donnell that he was told at a meeting shortly after being elected that he needed to raise $18,000 every day."

"Simply put, this meeting never happened,” [NRCC Executive Director Rob] Simms writes. “It is a work of fiction. Had the reporter or producer of the story bothered to verify this claim, they would have been told as much.”The letter was made public in a story written by Politico Friday afternoon.Jolly’s congressional office denies Simms statement outright, and they say they have the exact time and date when Jolly was told by “party leadership” the directive that he was going to have to raise $18,000 per day.“In response to the NRCC’s broadside to the credibility of Rep. David Jolly, and in response to the Executive Director’s bold assertion that a meeting with party leadership directing Rep. Jolly to raise $18,000 per day did not occur, we can confirm the date was April 3, 2014, the time was 5:30 p.m., the location was the NRCC’s Political Conference Room on the Second Floor,” writes Preston Rudie, Jolly’s communications director, in a statement to FloridaPolitics.com. “Out of respect for those involved, Rep. Jolly has intentionally left out names of participants since the beginning of this story, but if the NRCC wishes to escalate their denial, we are happy to provide additional information regarding the meeting.”Simms takes several shots at Jolly in his letter to CBS News, writing that the NRCC raised over $2 million in his special election victory over Democrat Alex Sink in March 2014, “significantly more than the congressman raised and spent on his own behalf.”And he makes explicit what some of Jolly’s GOP senate opponents have said about The Stop Act since he first introduced it three months ago-- that it’s purely a publicity stunt to cover over the fact that he is struggling to compete financially with some of his other opponents in fundraising.

The Stop Act, which has virtually no chance of passing for the very reasons Jolly introduced it-- money = power = more money = more power = congressional garbage like Steve Israel, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Steny Hoyer-- would prohibit federal officeholders from directly soliciting political contributions. The bill has 8 co-sponsors:

Grayson is the big deal on that list because, unlike Jolly and unlike the others on the list, he knows how to mobilize members across party lines and in the face of opposition from the party leadership to pass legislation. If Grayson-- who is running against Jolly for the open Florida Senate seat and crushed him in the race's first debate last week-- really gets into putting his energy behind passing the bill, he can get it done... even if it would face certain death in the Senate.